SRTA to hear proposal to expand bus service to Walmart

With an eye toward increasing bus service to the newly opened and expanded Walmart, SRTA officials will hold a public hearing Tuesday afternoon at the downtown city bus terminal.

Michael Holtzman Herald News Staff Reporter @MDHoltzman

FALL RIVER — With an eye toward increasing bus service to the newly opened and expanded Walmart, Southeastern Regional Transit Authority officials will hold a public hearing Tuesday afternoon at the downtown city bus terminal.

The proposal involves SRTA service on three main city roads: Pleasant, Bedford and Rodman streets.

The hearing, scheduled from 3 to 5 p.m., will address proposals to change routing and timing of the routes, SRTA Administrator Erik Rousseau said.

“People want more frequent service to the new Walmart,” Rousseau said, “and our goal is to use both Rodman and Pleasant streets” to get there.

For instance, by shortening the route down Pleasant Street and turning on Quarry to the Walmart at Quequechan and Jefferson streets, and modifying the Rodman route in a similar way, both routes will take travelers to the super store hourly.

That will have the effect of providing access to Walmart twice an hour or twice as often as current service, Rousseau said.

Walmart relocated from the Harbor Mall about a year ago.

Bedford Street comes in by modifying that route to go down Eastern Avenue and “filling in some gaps” to offset the Pleasant Street changes, he said.

Along with those intra-city routes, another related component would be with the inter-city routes coming up Pleasant from New Bedford, Rousseau added.

They will be explained at the public hearing, which is another in a series for SRTA in Fall River and New Bedford that is part of a “comprehensive service analysis” required by state law under the bus agency’s agreement to ensure funding priorities are met.

The state has increased its contract assistance by nearly $1 million the past two years. It went from $4,642,514 to $5,625,381, Rousseau reported.

The overall fiscal 2015 budget for service to Fall River and New Bedford and eight contiguous member communities is $16,783,617.

Of that total, only $2,345,182 is generated from fares, according to SRTA budget figures.

The lion’s share of its budget comes from the federal government, $6,270,201, followed by the $5.6 million state contribution and $2,538,671 from local assessments.

Fall River and New Bedford are pitching in roughly $120,000 to $125,000 more this year than the prior year, based upon the budget passed in May.

Rousseau said ridership in the two cities is roughly equal, slightly more in New Bedford.

Ridership use is the particularly encouraging sign, with 2,410,311 passengers for the fiscal year ending June 30 a “40 percent” improvement over the 2011 fiscal year, Rousseau reported.

He offered several steps SRTA’s implemented to improve service.

Fare reduction, naturally, had a significant impact, he said. They reduced the average fare from about $1.75 to $1.15.

Other “biters of the apple,” as Rousseau called them, included adding bus service on holidays and nine night routes, all requested by riders and advocacy groups that continue to be vocal seeking improvements.

In an effort to make each scheduled route more reliable, Rousseau said when buses arrive late to the city terminals they try to have protective buses ready to take off immediately to keep routes on track.

He said the route-changing proposals they will offer at Tuesday’s hearing are the result of outreach surveys to riders and their own internal assessments.

Input from the hearings will be incorporated into the comprehensive service analysis draft report that should be done by early to mid-September, Rousseau said.

Further information from SRTA can be obtained through its website, www.srtabus.com, visiting its Facebook page, Facebook.com/srtabus, or by calling the main office in New Bedford at 508-999-5211. Translations into Portuguese and Spanish are available.